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High Falls Film Festival Is Underway

Dresden Public Relations

The High Falls Film Festivalgot underway Thursday night at The Little Theatre in Rochester, featuring 15 films and other material predominantly  by women.

Executive Director of the festival, Nora Brown, says one reason for this event, which started in 2001, is to increase the number of women working in film. But she says unfortunately, there hasn't been a whole lot of progress. 

“We’re still looking at only less than 17 percent of the people behind the camera are women and when you get to cinematographers it’s as little as two percent of the cinematographers are women. And I still believe that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to try to level the playing field a little bit.”

The festival got a special kickoff. Instead of a ribbon cutting, a ribbon of actual film was cut by Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke, Nora Brown and filmmaker Ferne Pearlstein.

Even though film is not a large part of Kodak's business anymore, Clarke says it's still an important part of the overall mix. 

“Kodak is all in on film. Historically it was critically important. It’s the key part of our brand and it has a wonderful umbrella benefit to other parts of our business, plus we make money on it, and we’re investing in it.”

Clarke says Kodak this week unveiled an app which lets people know which movies were made on film and which theaters are showing them on film.

The High Falls Film Festival at The Little runs through November 14th.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.